Free Undead Genesis: Zombie by Colten Steele Page B

sight of the insect as it plummeted
towards the dark earth below.
    The boy stood there breathing heavily while
his heart beat out of control. The lethargy he had been
experiencing minutes before was replaced with an adrenalin rush
which had set his senses on high alert. He could feel blood
dripping slowly from the fiery wound in his neck, and the steadier
drip of sweat as it poured from his brow. His skin tingled as if
thousands of insects crawled over every inch of him and he
franticly wiped at every prickle.
    His feet itched the worst and he could not
bend over to reach them. He picked his left foot up and reached
behind him to scratch it. What he felt there was not his foot, but
something soft and gummy between his fingers. He kicked
instinctively and hysterically to get whatever was on his foot off,
once again nearly losing his balance, but it clung stubbornly. He
looked at his leg as it thrashed back and forth before realizing a
clinging soft body there was scuttling slowly up his calf. An inch
long white larva of the bondai fly crawled to his knee before he
was able to regain control. Lifting his leg, Marik plucked it off
and plopped it into a waiting pouch.
    When he looked down he saw another larva was
climbing on his right foot, and many others could be seen further
along the branch.
     
    ~ Chapter
III ~
     
    A week later Marik stared up at his father
Jarik as the older man applied black war paint to his son’s face.
They sat on a bench in the communal gathering hut located in the
center of the village. It was by far the largest building in the
tribe’s clearing. On a typical day, the women would be preparing
meals and scolding rambunctious young children here, but today
there were only men present.
    Surrounding them were others performing
similar tasks in preparation for the coming war. All were decorated
with vibrant colored feathers and war paint. A group of seven young
men stayed together at one end of the hut. They were loud, often
jumping to their feet and yelling boastful guarantees of their
upcoming success. Marik would not be accepted into this group until
his rites of adulthood were fulfilled by participating in and
surviving the coming conflict.
    The older men sat solemnly in a circle
discussing the possibility of losing their lives, or more
tragically, the lives of their arrogant, and ignorant, sons.
    The previous evening Marik’s coming of age
ceremony had been performed. He was the only boy this year old
enough to earn this honor. The tribe had once had hundreds of
members dominating a vast area of the jungle. In those days dozens
of boys would have been a part of the ceremony each year. Things
had changed greatly between then and now. Many years ago, before
Marik’s father was born, outsiders had come. These strange light
skinned men, now only remembered in tribal lore, claimed to want to
provide help, but instead brought curses which wiped out entire
villages with sickness. The forty eight surviving members of the
once grand society now hid fearfully in the deepest jungle and
struggled to preserve the ways of their ancestors.
    The upcoming yearly raid was an orchestrated
event with another tribe. They had also suffered the same
decimation from diseases. Both tribes required war and sacrifices
for their ancient traditions, yet two obstacles stood in the way of
achieving their goals. First, the distance between tribes was too
vast and the tribes moved too often for raids to happen by chance.
An agreed upon location had been set. Second, neither could afford
to lose many young men. Each tribe was only allowed to capture one
opposing warrior and kill another. The first tribe to accomplish
this was considered the victor and both tribes would withdraw
afterwards.
    As a rule, no long range weapons were allowed
in the engagement. Excluded were arrows, thrown spears, and, most
importantly, witchcraft.
    Any divergence from this arrangement would
result in a terrible curse being placed on the offending